TAIK GYI, Rangoon Division — Nestled at the foot of Pegu Yoma mountain range in the northwestern part of Rangoon Division, Myaing Hay Wun used to be a camp for timber elephants.
But after the government banned the export of logs in April, much of Burma’s timber business has been forced to change its production methods, causing a sharp decline in timber trade and leaving elephants like those at Myaing Hay Wun without work.
The ban is part of a government effort to reduce deforestation and the outflow of unprocessed timber; now only sawn wood can be exported.
In an ironic twist, the elephants who once lived in the jungles, have become victims of efforts to save Burma’s dwindling forests and put its timber industry on a more sustainable and profitable footing.
Across Burma, thousands of elephants—by some estimates as many as 5,000—have been employed in the timber industry since British colonial times to extract logged trees from the forest. State-controlled agency the Myanmar Timber Enterprise is believed to employ about half of all timber elephants.
In the logging camps, the handlers, called oozies, live together with their elephants in the forest, washing them in the river and relying on the surrounding jungles for food and medicine for the pachyderms.
At Myaing Hay Wun, a 10-acre camp of the Myanmar Timber Enterprise located some 120 km north of Rangoon, plans are now under way to turn it into a tourist attraction. It is one of 21 elephant logging camps that were recommended for such a transformation by the Ministry of Forestry last year.
So far, Burma has one government-run elephant camp that has been turned into a tourist site, at Pho Kya in Yedashway Township in Pegu division, while Green Hill Valley in Kalaw, Shan state, is a privately-owned camp that was successfully turned into a tourist attraction.
Aung Chient, a forester at Myaing Hay Wun camp, said the government issued an order earlier this year instructing him to prepare the camp for tourist visitors in order to create jobs for both people and animals.
“If the elephants are unemployed for some time, they tend to get wild,” said Aung Chient. “Plus, we need jobs for people here too. If not, the camp will be reclaimed by the forest.”
